Jonathan Zarate and Detective Work

Today, I would like to continue our project of "detective work," examining what accused criminals say in open court for clues to their "heart" - the place where conscience resides.

In our last post, we looked at Bernard Madoff, who stands out for enormous financial wrongdoing. On the docket today, among others, is Jonathan Zarate, who has become infamous for a different sort of crime - the death of his teenage neighbor.

When we looked at Madoff, we wrote with a large dose of skepticism (he is a smooth talker, after all, as his clients can testify) and a small measure of hope, because he did not blame others when he pled guilty to running a $65 billion Ponzi scheme.

But our take on Zarate is much less optimistic. (Readers, feel free to weigh in.)

In all this, we repeat up front all the "fine print" of our last post, including that we make no judgment on any defendant's moral or legal guilt or innocence, leaving that to God and the courts. (See our previous post for all the caveats.)

(As with our previous post, the statements from defendants appeared in The Star-Ledger or nj.com articles on the court proceedings.)

What makes this exercise interesting, in my view, is that evangelicals believe that there are two kinds of repentance, the sorrow one feels after wrongdoing catches up with you.

One kind of "repentance" is unto death, and the other kind of repentance is unto life.

So what is the difference? The first "repentance" is merely sorrow that something happened.

Everybody in prison has that kind of sorrow. Something happened, they got caught, and now they're in prison. In that sense, they're "sorry" for what they did.

The repentance unto life is something vastly different. It is a realization that you, not circumstances, have messed up. And it's followed by a turnaround from a wrong attitude, from a wrong action, from a wrong direction that, unless changed, leads to destruction.

As one commentator observed on my previous post, actions must follow words, lest words be only words.

Of course, after hearing only what an accused person says in court, it is often difficult -- if not impossible -- to know just which kind of "repentance" an accused person has experienced.

But it's interesting, nonetheless, if for no other reason than because it offers perhaps a look into another person's heart.

So let's go to the case of Jonathan Zarate. In my (admittedly incomplete) view, his attitude toward what he was convicted of seems even less encouraging than that of the financier.

As is known, Zarate was sentenced last month for the murder and dismemberment of his 16-year-old neighbor.

Here's what Zarate's attorney, Richard Mazawey, said at his client's sentencing: First, that his client had undergone a "spiritual renaissance" since the murder.

What does that mean? It sounds nice - I guess everybody likes when a convicted murderer undergoes a spiritual transformation. But it is also vague enough not to commit to anything.

Then Zarate's attorney added, "This defendant, if it could be done all over again, would not go down that path, but for a mental defect."

Obviously, the statement is in keeping with Zarate's trial strategy - that the killing was the action of a man incapacitated mentally, and therefore of a defendant not criminally liable.

But there's a certain amount of "it just happened" about it.

With others, it gets worse. Take, for example, the case of the illegal immigrant from Honduras who was sentenced last month to life in prison without parole, plus 25 years.

The defendant was sentenced after he was convicted of killing a 10-year-old boy after abducting him from a Morristown park and attempting to sexually assault him.

"An innocent person has been accused," Porfirio Jimenez said through an interpreter, causing, as a reporter noted, those in the courtroom to gasp in disbelief.

"Since the trial has started," Jimenez added, "there has been racism. Everything is slander."

The judge was not impressed, and we aren't either.

"Based on the jury's findings, my conclusion is you are a depraved ferociously brutal pedophile who stands before me and shows absolutely no remorse," said the Superior Court judge in Morristown.

As this case seems to illustrate, sometimes there is no real repentance.

In other cases, at least three people were sentenced last month for drunk driving accidents.

One accident caused horrific injuries to a victim, one person was killed in another accident and three people were killed in a third crash.

In the case in which the victim lost her legs, her eyesight and part of her brain function, the statement by the man convicted of the accident does have some ring of "it just happened" about it.

"I should have pulled over, but I didn't," began Allen Henry Miller of Schenectady, N.Y. Then he added, "I never meant for this to happen. If I could change places with her, yes, I would. I hope one day she forgives me. I'm very sorry. I wish I could change it, but I can't."

Miller was sentenced to five years in prison, but he could serve less time - a sentence that outraged the victim's family.

Also receiving five years was a former New Jersey state police trooper who killed a man in an off-duty drunk driving accident.

The reporter noted that Christopher Brozyna apologized to the victim's family, but did not quote the exact words.

However, his attorney, Charles Uliano of West Long Branch, told the court, "Christopher has great remorse for what happened. He is a quality young man who had an egregious act of bad judgment."

Here again, we see two disappointing attitudes that pop up in many of these statements. First, there is the passive voice - "what happened," instead of "what I did."

Then, and we saw this in one example in our last post, there is the all too common attitude that the defendant is basically a good guy who, this once, messed up.

Maybe the defendant is basically a decent guy, or maybe not. (The attorney is asserting that, but we don't know.) But somehow, it's sort of irrelevant. We don't get graded on a curve.

Finally, there is the case of the former Morris County man who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a drunk driving accident that killed three people and seriously injured two others.

In my view, what was most interesting about what was said in the case of Damian D'Aleo was that it was said not by the defendant, but by members of his family.

While D'Aleo did not speak, his attorney, Gerald Saluti, read a statement from his client saying that D'Aleo would gladly change places with the victims if he could.

Then, D'Aleo's family and friends, who are not named by the reporter, added this insight into his character. Collectively, they volunteered that D'Aleo wouldn't hurt a fly, that he pulled stray kittens from oncoming traffic and that he cried whenever he heard a recording of Judy Garland singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

Then, D'Aleo's mother weighed in. "I wish you could see in my son's heart how wounded this tragedy has left him," Mary Matthews said.

The defendant's sister added, "Our loss may not compare to those who lost loved ones, but it is a terrible heartache for us to bear."

Morris County Assistant Prosecutor Robert Lane put a different light on things when he told the courtroom that the accident occurred after D'Aleo spent a long night of partying, and that along with drinking, he had also used cocaine and Ecstasy.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems less than manly to get your mom, sister and friends (and attorney) to speak while you remain silent.

And in all the statements, there seems, in my view, very little of the second sort of repentance, the genuine kind.